‘Research for electoral fraud against the leader of a rising far-right party in Romania, Romanian prosecutors are conducting, four days before European and local elections

The prosecution’s statement says a parliamentary party leader urged his employees to forge signatures to help an independent candidate meet the threshold required to run in Sunday’s election.

The statement did not mention the politician by name, but Gheorghe Simeon, head of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), issued a statement of his own, arguing that the investigation against him is politically motivated. “I expected (…) a move this week, an attempt to manipulate public opinion to exclude AUR from the electoral process,” he commented, denying he broke the law. “You will not intimidate us, you will not stop us,” he added.

Polls show AUR could emerge as the second party in Sunday’s election, behind the ruling coalition of the Social Democrats and Liberals. AUR was founded five years ago and opposes immigration and military aid to Ukraine. The party hopes to join the Eurogroup of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which includes Giorgia Meloni’s Italian Brothers and Poland’s opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party. At the same time, however, he has contacts with the far-right Eurogroup Identity and Democracy.